Where is the hottest place on Earth? Last October, when the temperatures were cooling down in the deserts of the Northern Hemisphere, I reported that through the research of scientists at Arizona State University and other institutions, the World Meteorological Organization had stripped that title from El Azizia, Libya, and had bestowed it upon Death Valley, California, on the grounds that the measurements recorded by the Italian occupiers of Libya had been in error.

I haven’t heard any reports of anyone over Death Valley way mounting a massive tourism campaign to take advantage of the title, but there are heat-seekers in this world who are daring enough—something enough, anyway—to head to the place in summertime just to experience such extremes. Now it appears as if those heat-seekers are going to have to apply for visas to the Islamic Republic of Iran, for, reports NASA, the true hottest spot on Earth is to be found in that nation’s Dasht-e Lūt, or Lūt Desert, a vast salt pan.

There, satellites have recorded higher temperatures than anywhere else on Earth, the extreme being a “land skin temperature” of 159.3 °F (70.7 °C) in 2005, which, as NASA notes, is “more than 12 °C (22 °F) warmer than the official air temperature record from Libya.” Thus, NASA holds—QED—that the Lūt is the world’s hottest spot.

(Reports UNESCO, by the way, the Lūt Desert also has the tallest sand pyramid in the world and the biggest nebkahs—that is, coppice sand dunes—in the world as well.)

Given that other temperature readings have been taken by other criteria, and not necessarily the LST, we may be revisiting this issue again to be certain that the numbers line up. And in any event, as NASA notes, the world’s hot spot may change from year to year, even though the essential conditions for making those hot spots do not.

For the moment, though, I’m quite satisfied that 159.3 °F is about as hot as necessary. It’s supposed to hit 111 °F (43.9 °C) where I live a couple of days from now, and knowing what I now know, I’m not going to breathe a whisper of complaint.